What Drives Immigration Amnesties?

Alessandra Casarico, Giovanni Facchini and Tommaso Frattini

No 3981, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We develop a general model of legal and illegal immigration to understand the basic tradeoffs faced by a government in the decision to implement an immigration amnesty in the presence of a selective immigration policy. We show that two channels play an important role: an amnesty is more likely the more restricted are the occupational opportunities of undocumented immigrants and the less redistributive is the welfare state. Empirical evidence based on a novel panel dataset of legalizations carried out by a group of OECD countries between 1980-2007 broadly supports the role played by the channels identified in our theoretical model.

Keywords: illegal immigration; amnesties; labor market mismatch; welfare state (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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